Boundary Cheaters

[Anonymous]

My beef isn't with the few MD people (6th year at school and we know none) but with the downtown place kids who aren't IB but magically show up though they aren't IB or at a feeder. We were on Capitol Hill before moving and each year there are always a number of CH kids who magically appear at Deal. Of course their parents are connected via city people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if this could be a successful Qui Tam case? I think it could be. The only problem may be that the cheaters don't have a lot of money (if they are low income PG families mostly, as is assumed on DCUM), so the recovery could be small unless you get into messy stuff like wage garnishing. The damages are easy to prove, however, because DC does charge a fee for out of state, so it's easy to arrive at a quantum of damages per student/year of cheating. If anyone out there knows any qui tam lawyers maybe worth asking...

BTW, I suggest this because qui tam is normally the way to go if citizens feel that the govt is not doing enough to enforce anti-fraud in the receipt of government resources. The classic qui tam cases are health care fraud but I don't see why not school fraud also.

Litigation has a price in terms of attorneys' fees and costs which need to be fronted, with a relative low payoff in terms of recovery. It's just not economically feasible. Even the DC Attorney General hasn't filed more than a couple of actions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if this could be a successful Qui Tam case? I think it could be. The only problem may be that the cheaters don't have a lot of money (if they are low income PG families mostly, as is assumed on DCUM), so the recovery could be small unless you get into messy stuff like wage garnishing. The damages are easy to prove, however, because DC does charge a fee for out of state, so it's easy to arrive at a quantum of damages per student/year of cheating. If anyone out there knows any qui tam lawyers maybe worth asking...

BTW, I suggest this because qui tam is normally the way to go if citizens feel that the govt is not doing enough to enforce anti-fraud in the receipt of government resources. The classic qui tam cases are health care fraud but I don't see why not school fraud also.

Litigation has a price in terms of attorneys' fees and costs which need to be fronted, with a relative low payoff in terms of recovery. It's just not economically feasible. Even the DC Attorney General hasn't filed more than a couple of actions.

DC also has a False Claims Act that awards whistleblowers part of anything recovered. I wonder if an enterprising lawyer could set up an assembly line and handle these cases in bulk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My beef isn't with the few MD people (6th year at school and we know none) but with the downtown place kids who aren't IB but magically show up though they aren't IB or at a feeder. We were on Capitol Hill before moving and each year there are always a number of CH kids who magically appear at Deal. Of course their parents are connected via city people.

I agree, although this isn't necessarily illegal. DCPS has a clause in their regulations that the Chancellor is allowed to override assignment policies "for the good of the system."

One of the ways that DCPS inoculates itself against change is to co-opt anyone with any political influence and make them stakeholders in the status quo.

I hear China has a similar system of state-run schools for the party elite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My beef isn't with the few MD people (6th year at school and we know none) but with the downtown place kids who aren't IB but magically show up though they aren't IB or at a feeder. We were on Capitol Hill before moving and each year there are always a number of CH kids who magically appear at Deal. Of course their parents are connected via city people.

I agree, although this isn't necessarily illegal. DCPS has a clause in their regulations that the Chancellor is allowed to override assignment policies "for the good of the system."

One of the ways that DCPS inoculates itself against change is to co-opt anyone with any political influence and make them stakeholders in the status quo.

I hear China has a similar system of state-run schools for the party elite.

There are a lot of comparisons, none of them favorable, between the privileges of the political elite and party functionaries in Communist countries and the perks and entitlements enjoyed by DC's political class and many DC government workers.

[Anonymous]

Parents who are employees of the school enroll their children and are cheaters themselves. What's the incentive to root out their co-workers' kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents who are employees of the school enroll their children and are cheaters themselves. What's the incentive to root out their co-workers' kids?

This is going on at our in-demand EOTP school, but in some instances I think it's actually good for the morale of the school. If it happened for EVERY teacher/employee, and they got preference over IB kids that cn't get into PS, then I'd start having an issue.

[Anonymous]

Why you might see Maryland license plates at pick up/drop off:

-Nanny/babysitter/carpool with the driver being from Md.
-Lazy parents: move from Md to DC, too lazy to actually change registration.
-Split home: mom has primary custody of kids, but dad drops kids off on Mondays/ picks up on Friday (etc)
-Relitives: grandma decides to drop grand kids off once and a while. Etc.
-Actual cheaters coming in from Virginia.

When my DS was a student at Walls, he often got a ride from a family friend who lives just across the line, and who worked two blocks from the school. It was easy, and we lived in DC, but he would be dropped off from a car with Md plates. The horror!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents who are employees of the school enroll their children and are cheaters themselves. What's the incentive to root out their co-workers' kids?

I don't have a problem with teacher's kids attending the school. I think it is good form them to be a "parent" too. I do have a problem with the kids who are placed at high achieving schools which are overcrowded with zero spots in the lottery simply because their parents know someone downtown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents who are employees of the school enroll their children and are cheaters themselves. What's the incentive to root out their co-workers' kids?

This is going on at our in-demand EOTP school, but in some instances I think it's actually good for the morale of the school. If it happened for EVERY teacher/employee, and they got preference over IB kids that cn't get into PS, then I'd start having an issue.

This needs to end. If teachers and staff who don't live in DC are going to have the ability to enroll their kids here, then it needs to be aboveboard, the costs need to be known and how it works with resident and other rights needs to be thought through -- before fully informed decisions are made. Otherwise, it's just another under the table arrangement that so characterizes government in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why you might see Maryland license plates at pick up/drop off:

-Nanny/babysitter/carpool with the driver being from Md.
-Lazy parents: move from Md to DC, too lazy to actually change registration.
-Split home: mom has primary custody of kids, but dad drops kids off on Mondays/ picks up on Friday (etc)
-Relitives: grandma decides to drop grand kids off once and a while. Etc.
-Actual cheaters coming in from Virginia.

When my DS was a student at Walls, he often got a ride from a family friend who lives just across the line, and who worked two blocks from the school. It was easy, and we lived in DC, but he would be dropped off from a car with Md plates. The horror!

The point is, if a student is regularly being dropped off and picked up in a car with MD (or VA) plates, the school needs to investigate. Perhaps there'a a perfectly reasonable and legitimate reason (although not registering your car in DC is not one!). But if there's non-residency cheating going on, it needs to be addressed right away. Methinks sometimes that those who offer all sorts of excuses for the large number of out of state cars transporting students don't want anyone to look to closely. If there's nothing to hide, then there's nothing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

If DCPS could find 30 out of District students illegitimately attending Deal, for example, then they might not need to end Oyster's feeder rights to Deal.

[Anonymous]

"Boundary Cheaters" sounds like a good name for a reality TV show. Better than "The District."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My beef isn't with the few MD people (6th year at school and we know none) but with the downtown place kids who aren't IB but magically show up though they aren't IB or at a feeder. We were on Capitol Hill before moving and each year there are always a number of CH kids who magically appear at Deal. Of course their parents are connected via city people.

I thought Bancroft fed to Deal. And Bancroft isn't/hasn't been hard to get into in the past. So I wouldn't be alarmed at all if many CH families were attending Deal, legally.

[Anonymous]

The cheating subject is a good topic to bring up to the Mayoral hopefuls. It should not be happening especially with the over-crowding at some schools.